Curling and croppers

Tonight we went curling with Ben's work. To save me repeating myself, click here to read what I wrote about curling the first time we tried it, just over a year ago. I managed to get a much better slide happening this time, but had less success at landing the stones in the house. Ben felt his form was better than last year too, and thankfully he didn't take any chunks out of the ice this time!







However, tonight seemed to be quite an unlucky night for Ben's workmates. In under an hour, THREE of them had fallen over on the ice and sustained injuries requiring medical treatment - nose, elbow and forehead. And although there were four games in progress most of the time, all three injured parties were playing with us when they came a cropper! (Also, in the second last photo above, that's not break-dancing... it's a near miss!)

We left feeling thankful to still be in one piece!!

Cultus Lake Waterslides

Three weeks ago we spent a Saturday at the Cultus Lakes Waterslide Park in Chilliwack, about an hour from where live. We car pooled with Gerard and Janelle, and met Derek, Tyson and Nicole there. The weather had been forecast at 25 degrees but turned out to only reach 17 degrees, brrr! At least this meant there were barely any line-ups! Here are some photos of the park...


And the rest of the photos are courtesy of Janelle...

L-R below: Gerard, Janelle, Tyson, Ben, Derek.

Here are some before, during and after photos of my dramatic incident for the day: being whacked on the nose by the top of Ben's head when we hit the bottom on the "Valley of Fear", a half-pipe shaped ride in which the riders are pushed from the top of one side and slide back and forth like a pendulum until coming to rest at the bottom. As demonstrated by me in the first photo, we had been instructed to put our chin on our chest to avoid such an incident. The crack occurred between the first and second photo...

Ouch!! However, my nose is okay now, so thanks for your concern but there's no need to worry. ;)

On the way home that evening, we had a scrumptious and enormous tea at a Szchezuan (Chinese) restaurant the others knew about. Nose incidents aside, it was a great day out!

Ben comes a cropper

On Friday night, Ben went off to play ice hockey in Langley with some of the guys. It was a late start, 10:50pm, and it was his first time ever. Here are some photos Darwin took of Ben getting suited up in his armour...


Well, due to his limited experience in ice skating, let alone trying to do anything else at the same time, after 5 minutes on the ice he came into sudden face-to-face contact with it.

Around 1am, I was vacuuming the kitchen (!!) and this is the sight I was greeted with as he walked in the door:

Thankfully, no missing teeth or otherwise serious injuries. Just a loose flap of lip, a bleeding nostril, and a split across his nose. Ouch!!

Snowboarding!

There are mountains to the north of Vancouver that can be seen from around town on clear days, and the lights of the three ski fields up there are visible at night. Today we went snowboarding at one of them, Mount Seymour, which is only 17 kms from our house. :) Here are some photos taken on our way up...

Ben and I had brought our snowboarding gear (waterproof jackets, pants, gloves. goggles etc) with us from England/Australia. Then, over the last week or so, he found incredible bargains - on Craigslist of course! - for secondhand snowboards, bindings and boots. Even at the cheapest ski field (Seymour), it costs $40 per person per day to hire this gear... Well, Ben got two boards and one set of bindings for himself for $50, and boots for $30. Then he found a board for me for $70, and boots for $20. Everything is in very good condition and Ben was most excited! So now our main expenditure is the lift pass on days we go - $42pp at Seymour. Yay! :D

We collected some extras on our way up to Seymour. Lisa, Susie and Amber (who used to live where Sus lives and was back for a visit this weekend) came along for the ride, and spent the day hanging out in the lodge, taking photos, reading books, and drinking hot chocolate while we were off boarding!


Ben and I boarded mainly on two trails throughout the day - first on the one closest to the lodge, but once we'd done that a few times the lift line was getting too crowded, so we headed further up the mountain and boarded down a longer trail. Here are a few pics from the first part of the day...



Ben changed my bindings partway through the day, as the board had come with the bindings set in "natural" position (left foot forward), but I was having lots of trouble with my turns. Longtime readers may recall I had a similar problem the last time we went snowboarding - in Austria almost a year ago. Anyway, once I changed over to "goofy" (right foot forward), it felt a lot better - but I still stuggled all day with keeping my weight forward on my right foot when turning, and with being confident enough to carry through on turns. This is an ongoing problem that I will hopefully overcome while we live here, as it would make boarding much more enjoyable for me, and less boring/frustrating for Ben!!! :)

The view down over Vancouver from the lodge area was beautiful, but once we got up to the higher slope it was spectacular!! A huge cloud was hanging low over the city, and the sight of the late afternoon sun shining on the water, and the city stretching out around it, was just amazing. WOW! The mountain itself was beautiful too - snow-covered pine trees, occasional craggy rocks, and acres of beautiful white powder. Here are some photos taken from the slopes and the chairlift this afternoon...



And here's a video taken from the chairlift...

The biggest drama of the day was my stack as we got off the chairlift just before starting what I'd already decided would be my final run. I'm not sure why I fell (and this certainly won't help my fear of disembarking chairlifts), but with my left foot out of its bindings, my right leg came over the top in such a way that I felt this great strain in my right knee as it fought to not be twisted around backwards with the board attached. It hurt a lot!

A nice Ski Patrol guy (Roger) happened to be close behind us on the chairlift, so was there instantly to help me out of the way, inspect my knee, and offer to arrange transport back down the mountain if needed. However, the pain quickly diminished, and after a brief rest I was able to snowboard carefully back down to the lodge, where I called it a day. And sent Ben off to do a few more runs, finally unhindered by me!! I've only had a few little twinges the rest of the day, so - thankfully - it was just a close call! :)

Anyway, that was our first day up the mountain - there should be a few more to come! :) Goodnight!

Guest blog entry #1 from Delle – THE FIRST DAY

A HUGE hello to all back home and to those who haven't met me yet, 'Hi, I'm Delle (obviously!) - I'm an Aussie girl from Brisbane, Queensland, and I am very very very VERY excited to be in England visiting Anna and Ben!!!!'

My adventure begins after many many many hours of flying - these I have attempted to block from my memory so we'll move right on to arriving at Heathrow at about 6am local time on Friday the 4th of July. I travelled over with Lachlan, the younger brother of Dotti (another Aussie girl living over here at the moment who has previously featured in this blog). Anna and Ben were quite easy to identify at the airport due to Anna's wild and enthusiastic arm-waving. :) Very handy!

After stuffing our assorted luggage into the car, we drove to a nearby station and caught the tube into London. Our next stop was the Russian Embassy where we were to meet up with Dotti and hopefully obtain a visa for Lachlan. Anna, Ben and I left them in the rather lengthy queue (see picture below) and headed off to explore a little of London. Our first stop was Notting Hill and the Portobello Road Markets (see photo below).





The first place we stopped at was a cute little hat stall and tiny shop – which turned out to be the site of my first significant and spectacularly clumsy moment. Now at this point I must defend myself in advance:

1. Take note that I had only maybe a few hours of sleep within the last 30 hour period.
2. That brief slumber was taken virtually upright on a plane and therefore not exactly what you would classify as the highest quality.
3. I have very poor spatial awareness at the best of times and so it wasn't particularly surprising when the following occurred...

Wandering leisurely into the back of the tiny shop, I browsed through the selection of hats – along the back wall were row upon row of them. What I failed to notice was that although the hats were in neat horizontal lines, the floor was not!!! As I ran my eye along the hats I literally stepped into thin air and tumbled down one flight of stairs, around a corner, and down a second flight of stairs, eventually stopping a few steps from the bottom and nearly ending up in the poor shop-owner's storeroom.

Ben was directly behind me and quickly ran down the stairs to check I was okay. Anna had been outside the shop but her attention was caught by the sound of a multitude of hats falling off the wall inside the shop. Upon realising that it was me as well as the hats that had fallen, she suddenly had visions of VERY terrible things having happened to me – and I had only been in the country about 3 hours!!! I did have to be helped to my feet as I was absolutely hysterical with laughter...this was just so typical! For Anna it was probably a relief to discover that I could still walk, talk and breathe, and emerged from the experience relatively unscathed – albeit with some minor bruises on my arms, legs and ribs and a couple of bumps on my head (don't worry Mum! - just assume this is a significant exaggeration of the true events :P).

That experience past, we wandered happily for an hour or so around the rest of the markets. Afterwards we headed via Baker Street to Regent's Park, where we had a lovely lunch and rejoined Dotti and Lachlan – back from their unfortunately unsuccessful trip to the Russian Embassy. We then wandered alongside the Thames and saw a few more of the sights of London.

After that, we caught the tube back to where the car was parked and headed north to Mansfield - where Dotti is currently living.

I have never felt so tired in my life and I have never been so glad to finally shower and flop into bed – completely and utterly exhausted!!!!